Wakoopa raises new round of funding

Wakoopa, an online social network for software and gaming raised a second round of funding from Big Bang Ventures and HENQ Invest, to further develop the company.

“Wakoopa plays right into our mission of backing bright and driven entrepreneurs. We believe the company will be a new category leader, driving convergence of social network and intelligent recommendations in the software and games space,” said Barend van den Brande of the Belgian venture capitalist Big Bang Ventures.

Amsterdam-based Wakoopa raised its first round in January 2007 from the Dutch Creative Industry Fund, a venture fund that is backed by the four largest media companies in the Netherlands, Ilse, IDG, Telegraaf and Veronica.

Wakoopa currently has tens of thousands of users and founders, Wouter Broekhof and Robert Gaal say the new money will allow them to get even closer to their ultimate goals. “With a year of experience behind us we now know exactly where our focus needs to be when it comes to future functionality and expansion,” said Gaal.

“With this investment we’ll attract more talented people to our team and look for international partnerships.”

Wakoopa is a social internet service, which allows use of software and games to be tracked, and users to share their experiences of particular applications. This generates ratings, giving visitors and members of the site a view of what is popular in their social circle and beyond. Users also receive recommendations about what software they should be using and are able to post reviews of different software packages.